Ideas

Sunday, 16 March 2014 Ideas Special from the BBC Freedom 2014 Series

Brazil's anti-slavery hit-squads are unique. Since 1995, these committed bands of labour inspectors, accompanied by heavily armed police, have rescued 46,000 people deemed to be working as slaves. But Brazil's legal definition of slavery is contentious. It includes degrading conditions of work, which campaigners say amount to coercion. Some employers reject that. And now the stakes have been raised by proposals to confiscate land from bosses found to be flouting the anti-slavery standards. In a journey that takes her from cattle country on the edge of the Amazon, to the parched, rocky badlands of the north-east, Linda Pressly meets the campaigners, employers and politicians on both sides of the argument, and hears powerful testimony from the workers trapped in the middle.

Another feature of the BBC’s Freedom 2014 season is a look at some of Europe’s Troublemakers. . . profiles of controversial Europeans who are stirrers to some and heroes to others. Today, reporter Lucy Ash is with the Spanish activist Ada Colau who works to stop victims of the country's financial crisis from having their homes re-possessed.